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Your nitpicking is correct. I don't think it changes the big picture, though, so it's kinda impotent nitpicking for nitpicking's sake. If I were to be pedantic

Your nitpicking is correct. I don't think it changes the big picture, though, so it's kinda impotent nitpicking for nitpicking's sake. If I were to be pedantic about every little detail, I would end up with unified theory of the universe. But since you brought it up: MOOC will also dramatically alter how we look at higher ed. For historical reasons, my CS department emerged from EE department, since electronics existed before computers. As a result, I had to take courses in analog electronics, semi-conductors and what not. Out of 5 years of study, about 3 were relevant to CS. I hated those courses, they proved to be useless in my programming career and yet, I had no choice. At the same time I couldn't have taken a course in Greek history, even if I also liked Greek history (Spartans, those buff, semi-naked men!) in addition to programming. The future will not be like that. The future of higher ed will be à la carte. People will no longer get a major in CS, they'll take whatever courses they like and think are useful in finding employment. It's happening already - Udacity already made a big deal (rightfully so) about people who found employment at good companies after completing merely few courses. (as an aside, the rarely spoken truth about programming is that you don't really need education; I don't credit my university with teaching me much about what's actually relevant to real-life programming)

tripzilch 14y ago
While I agree that MOOC is absolutely going to disrupt traditional college/university schooling, I disagree with a couple of your arguments. Actually no, scratch that, now that I think about it, if I had been able to pick my own curriculum then yeah--(snip a bunch of stuff about what I myself learned, did not learn, would have picked, etc. nobody cares about that!)--maybe I would not have learned AS much, but like you say, at least most of it would have been useful to my personal development. And I could have patched some gaps in my knowledge (Analysis) that later on gave me trouble with advanced courses that I really could have gone for otherwise. And the GP comment was not nitpicking. Nitpicking is when someone makes a big deal out of a small thing. Just because the error they pointed out does not invalidate your argument, does not make it nitpicking. Yours was a pretty big error: comparing dropout rates for a single class to those of an entire education. And it deserves pointing out, because such a "little detail" has a good chance of causing confusion later on in the discussion. And you calling it "pedantic" really does injustice to the GP calling out a genuine error. It's not like they were being rude or annoying about it. And I admit, this paragraph can be considered both nitpicking and pedantic, I still want to say it because you could have been more polite about it. "Right. While that doesn't invalidate my argument, thanks for the correction."

tripzilch 14y ago

While I agree that MOOC is absolutely going to disrupt traditional college/university schooling, I disagree with a couple of your arguments. Actually no, scratch that, now that I think about it, if I had been able to pick my own curriculum then yeah--(snip a bunch of stuff about what I myself learned, did not learn, would have picked, etc. nobody cares about that!)--maybe I would not have learned AS much, but like you say, at least most of it would have been useful to my personal development. And I could have patched some gaps in my knowledge (Analysis) that later on gave me trouble with advanced courses that I really could have gone for otherwise. And the GP comment was not nitpicking. Nitpicking is when someone makes a big deal out of a small thing. Just because the error they pointed out does not invalidate your argument, does not make it nitpicking. Yours was a pretty big error: comparing dropout rates for a single class to those of an entire education. And it deserves pointing out, because such a "little detail" has a good chance of causing confusion later on in the discussion. And you calling it "pedantic" really does injustice to the GP calling out a genuine error. It's not like they were being rude or annoying about it. And I admit, this paragraph can be considered both nitpicking and pedantic, I still want to say it because you could have been more polite about it. "Right. While that doesn't invalidate my argument, thanks for the correction."